3.99 Clarification on civilians needed

[ShaTiK]

I re-read the dev diary, but can't get the idea. I had 3 trial runs, but all ended a hour in because pops not migrating to new colonies and also bizarre job flickering bug going on. So I can't test it out properly for now, but I want to better understand the logic.

And the question is simple - what is their point and place? The dev diary mentioned things about civilians being the most populous and most stable strata and also how they are the pool of pops to populate new colonies. But that is pretty vague. As of right now your starting planet get a pool of them, they produce some amenities and trade and they practically disappear after you build a few districts and never appear ever again. Are we supposed to minimize expansion to prevent them from becoming other strata? Or they are not supposed to promote? Are they just an upgraded version of unemployed so in late game you can have them to offset some so far unseen drawback that working strata bring? Or they are the intended way of generating amenities and trade without having to build an amenities zone? So many questions.

This is early beta (or late playable alpha, depending on your view) and things don't quite work well, so it might be just the civilians not working at all. But if so, I would like to know that they are indeed not working right now and, again, so far I haven't seen a big disclaimer 'here is a completely new strata and game mechanic but it isn't working yet at all, ignore for now'

 

[Calvax]

Civilians are supposed to be a pool of unemployed that can migrate to other worlds and provide some basics for our planets. Neither of these currently work properly in the beta. The former because demotion isn't working as intended, it's meant to be that unemployed from other strata drop down to civilians relatively quickly but whether it's the job shuffling or some other bug they're not doing it properly. Also there seems to be some bugs with migration as I've seen civilians that have "no migration target" listed even when there are other worlds.

Exactly what they're meant to provide a planet doesn't seem to be finalised yet. There was mention in one of the streams of them giving amenities so I think the devs are still working on that, and given that their focus seems primarily on bug fixing, UI, and fundamentals of districts/zones/buildings we probably won't see civilian resources finalised until they work on eco balance.

As for what you're supposed to do in the long run I expect that to depend. For some builds and some starts it might be better to develop your starting world and hold off on colonising. Others might require you to build up a steady supply of civilians before flooding your guaranteed habitables. Hopefully there won't be one dominant strategy so we can have some interesting variety.

I expect that your typical 4.0 strategy will be somewhere in the middle. Develop your homeworld a bit until you've found some good colonisation targets that have traits you can make use of. Then you'll want to colonise those as specialised worlds and get them up and running quickly.

 

[ShaTiK]

Civilians are supposed to be a pool of unemployed that can migrate to other worlds and provide some basics for our planets. Neither of these currently work properly in the beta. The former because demotion isn't working as intended, it's meant to be that unemployed from other strata drop down to civilians relatively quickly but whether it's the job shuffling or some other bug they're not doing it properly. Also there seems to be some bugs with migration as I've seen civilians that have "no migration target" listed even when there are other worlds.

Exactly what they're meant to provide a planet doesn't seem to be finalised yet. There was mention in one of the streams of them giving amenities so I think the devs are still working on that, and given that their focus seems primarily on bug fixing, UI, and fundamentals of districts/zones/buildings we probably won't see civilian resources finalised until they work on eco balance.

As for what you're supposed to do in the long run I expect that to depend. For some builds and some starts it might be better to develop your starting world and hold off on colonising. Others might require you to build up a steady supply of civilians before flooding your guaranteed habitables. Hopefully there won't be one dominant strategy so we can have some interesting variety.

I expect that your typical 4.0 strategy will be somewhere in the middle. Develop your homeworld a bit until you've found some good colonisation targets that have traits you can make use of. Then you'll want to colonise those as specialised worlds and get them up and running quickly.

Thanks for the info. I guess I misunderstood the goal of this beta. Kinda cool to take part of that stage of development. But, well... I'm not a game developer so if I had good ideas for that kind of thing, I wouldn't be doing my current job and be doing game dev instead. But I'm not. So purely statistically chances of my ideas being useful or even heard by devs are within margin of statistical error.

Cool to share your opinion, but this is more 'come join us in figuring out what we should do with the game, but we won't pay you, you have zero direct communication, no way of getting proper feedback or testing your own ideas, but feel free to report bugs and share what you think, we probably won't read your suggestion since we are getting +100 per day'. I don't mean to be a Richard to devs or players, but this is what it looks to me

 

[Calvax]

but this is more 'come join us in figuring out what we should do with the game, but we won't pay you, you have zero direct communication, no way of getting proper feedback or testing your own ideas, but feel free to report bugs and share what you think, we probably won't read your suggestion since we are getting +100 per day'. I don't mean to be a Richard to devs or players, but this is what it looks to me

There's feedback forms posted at the end of each patch note, the devs read comments, are quite active in responding to people, are doing weekly streams where they respond to live questions, and are actively responding on the other platforms too (discord, the subreddit etc). So I'd say it's far from zero communication or no way of giving feedback. One recent example is several people, including myself, gave feedback on the need for a mixed industrial district. Now we have one.

It's true there are a lot of voices so there's a good chance of an individual opinion being not followed up on. That's kind of true everywhere though. I definitely appreciate that some people don't want to test a game and give feedback. It's opt-in at least so no one is being forced to do so (i.e. if it was released without any feedback sought and so anyone playing a live version was essentially being treated as a beta tester).

 

[The Founder]

They are intended to be:
- overflow population with no downsides, but minimal yields
- that is safely stored up to a cap (cap is not in yet)
- ready to work in new jobs on demand
- ready to migrated to other colonies when jobs open up (migration seems broken)
- very cheaply to resettle (that seems in)

 

[ShaTiK]

They are intended to be:
- overflow population with no downsides, but minimal yields
- that is safely stored up to a cap (cap is not in yet)
- ready to work in new jobs on demand
- ready to migrated to other colonies when jobs open up (migration seems broken)
- very cheaply to resettle (that seems in)

So then unemployed 'strata' is just a temporary midpoint between stratified worker and civilian. I remember the dev diary mentioning that a POP goes down the social ladder from top to bottom and the bottom being civilian.

And also this brings an interesting question - since every pop have their own grown, you now get unemployed elites from the start. What happens when you finally get your first colony to a level when it actually need rulers? Would current unemployed rulers from capital rush there? Civvies? Local workers/specialists get promotion?

I'm not hating the system as I'm with zones, I'm more curious. It just seems to me like an awful lot to balance. I would reserve my opinion until they actually implement the system, so for now it is all just empty speculation. Not the worst usage of my time, but not the most productive either.

Also this reminds me of peasants from Vicky3. But in SPAAAAACE. And very much a lite-version.

 

[The Founder]

So then unemployed 'strata' is just a temporary midpoint between stratified worker and civilian. I remember the dev diary mentioning that a POP goes down the social ladder from top to bottom and the bottom being civilian.

Civilians are supposed to have a limit, after which they too have a unemployed form that is unhappy. So there is pressure to stop growth or expand.
But currently they are uncapped.
And everyone directly demotes into civilians for now, assuming demotion doesn't break (which it does a lot).

And also this brings an interesting question - since every pop have their own grown, you now get unemployed elites from the start. What happens when you finally get your first colony to a level when it actually need rulers? Would current unemployed rulers from capital rush there? Civvies? Local workers/specialists get promotion?

The game will still prefer to promote local population that can do the job. Only Colonist job is a bit "sticky" and won't release pops, except into something like a Roboticst.
But they had some idle thoughts about pops maybe needing time to promote later on?

I think unemployed Rulers and Specialists are supposed to migrate, but they should rarely get the opportunity unless local population is blocked from promoting. We actually do have elites migrating to colonies that do not have a job for them.

Civilians how should absolutely be mobile and rushing to new colonies. Yet they seem to te the one population group that absolutely never migrates. At least they are cheap to resettle. I think default cost is 100 Energy, no Unity.

 

[tappi]

Just having civilians be a pool that (hopefully) doesn't spam you to give everyone unemployment benefits is enough to validate their existence to me.